Monkey Puzzle II!

Garden Sprawl Friday

Been some while since having a GSF post, and figure starting them again away from the backyard and into the forest - the effortless garden - would be good, as I went there this evening.



There are five berries that I know of in these woods to forage: red huckleberry, osoberry, thimbleberry, salmon berry and blackberry. Salmon berry ripens first. They come in either pale yellow or dark red. Their taste tends to the insipid side, but are somehow still juicy and refreshing. This year there are lots of them and they're big and juicier than usual.

The osoberry is close behind salmon berry in ripening, suddenly all of them at once, and the red huckleberries ripen at the same time, but not all at once. Then the thimbleberries, with just a few fully ripened at this time. Blackberries don't ripen until later in summer.

The osoberry, or Indian plum:










The skin of them is thin and they want to stain your hands. They have pits and there is not a whole lot of meat, but they are very unique, and I find, pleasant in their taste. Some people say they taste like a cross between a blueberry and an olive. Honestly, I cannot think of a closer comparison.

They grow all over the woods in thickets. They hang in clusters that you pick entire as you walk by and eat them and spit out pits as you walk through the woods, until you come across another thicket and take another cluster, and so on.

The red huckleberry:






This one is my favourite. I like the green of the bush; I like how, with a few exceptions, it only grows out of rotting douglas fir stumps, or occasionally the base of living ones; I like the zingy, tart-sweet taste of the berries; I like the taste of its leaves, which I eat sometimes along with the berries.


The thimbleberry:









While the red huckleberry is my favourite all around, the thimbleberry is undeniably the richest in flavour. The taste to me is like a rich jam. The berries just melt in your mouth with a deep warm flavour. And not surprisingly, it is used to make prized jams, by people who jealously guard the secrets of their thimbleberry locations. There really is no need for that where I live, it's so common. Although the plant does have to have a prime location to make berries at their tastiest best.

One nice thing about picking the thimbleberry, as with all the other berries above, is that though it grows in thickets, they do not cut you apart like blackberries. In fact, the leaves feel like velvet - no exaggeration. And therein is a useful piece of information. I don't speak from experience, but it's common lore among wildcrafters that in case you are ever in the wild in those areas of North America where thimbleberry grows and you have to, uhm, you know, and then you have to, well, you know, then you can use the leaves for...you know. Anyhow! Of course with all berries, the ones that get the most light as well as adequate wet are the best tasting.

Encounter in the Woods

Yesterday I was in Redwood Park, down in the middle-woods, painting.

Whenever I leave the park with my painting I always carry the canvas in such a way that it is hidden as much as possible. I'm not scared of what others may think of me, going into the park to paint, but for some reason I don't like the actual painting, the results of my labour, to show to anyone who may be passing by. Since I cannot cover the newly painted canvas without wrecking what I just painted, I have to carry it as it is.

Having come out of the hill's woods I headed through the main trails past the redwood grove. There were three people sitting on a log bench in front of the grove: two young women and a man who was rather rotund with a cane. The man was eyeing me as I approached, and eyeing me even as I looked at him, longer than people usually would when their stare is being returned. But then he looked away.

Coming close I saw he had Down's, and the two young women certainly had something - a milder form of Down's, or some form of autism, I don't know. I greeted them, saying hi, and passed in front of them, trying my best to hold the canvas with my left hand at my side so that it didn't show, as they were seated on my right. Suddenly I heard from one of the girls a voice that was totally un-premeditated, unafraid, unmannered and totally natural - almost a shout:

"Did you paint that?"

Dang it.

"Yes," I answered, as I kept walking, and she called after to come back and let's see it. I turned back, went up and showed it to her. A small square canvas.

It was a strange thing. Something like an electric bubble of awe settled instantly around her as she looked at it, carefully holding the stretched canvas by its sides, as she said, in the same spontaneous way, "Wow, that is so good." But all the 'o's in the exclamation were extended.

Now, I'm well aware of my limitations. I know I'll always be learning and that until the end of my life my own achievements will always have something beside which to dwindle in comparison - but that this fault-filled faltering is the unfathomed, bottomless deep from which all great work springs.

The reason I was moved was that there was something in her reaction that was so pure, such that to think about it I am somewhat ashamed to call myself a painter - that is, one who professes to look and observe. She had a special way of seeing that seemed to be at one with some "disability".

Nothing about style or anything like that. She simply took full delight in the painting, and it was deep delight. But again, she took deep delight not in order to satisfy the one who painted it, but according as something had been given to her for the moment and she was taking what beauty or permanence of it that she could: the eternal moment.

I lived with my friend in a basement suite for two years, and the Hungarian family who lived above us has a son with Down's; the youngest in their family of eight, and last to be living at home. What I am getting at is something you can only begin to see after being with them for some time. They're sitting off to the side of the trail, quite content in the surrounding quiet, and they have very keen sight. They rejoice in things - nothing can be too small - with a full-fledged plunge, and the water-graces from the plunge splash onto other people who are standing around.

What a lot of people do not see about them is that they are already deeply immersed.

She asked how long the painting took and I said this was my second sitting and it wasn't yet finished, and she abruptly wished me a good day and I said the same and went away. Something about the encounter nagged at me as I kept on through the trail:

Why do I not take the same delight in my painting?

In a few seconds that girl infused my canvas with its true potential, causing me in turn to see it.

C.S. Lewis came immediately to mind:

"'What fountain’s that?'

"'It is up there in the mountains,' said the Spirit. 'Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.'"

It may require huge efforts to leave something the way it is

Redwood Park has come - mostly via my drawings - to occupy regular space on this blog, which is something I never planned. The place is just a part of myself I guess.

So I was fairly infuriated to hear last week that there were proposals being made to Surrey Council about bringing various adventure/zipline themes into the heritage park.

As I am wont to do, I wrote a letter to local paper whence I first read about the proposals.

Then, before sending it in, I toned it down and excised words, sentences, paragraphs, as I have learned to do.

They printed the letter in the Wednesday paper. If you're interested, you can read it at the paper's website, here.

I have yet to write to the members of council, and my MLA and MP.